A threat ignored

Climate change imperils security

You wouldn’t know it from watching televised presidential debates, but there is one looming national security threat that our country’s lawmakers aren’t taking seriously.

I’m not talking about Iran, a nation whose nuclear program is a favorite talking point for Republicans. Nor am I referring to guns and gun-control measures, an old standby of the Democrats.

And I’m not even going to point to ISIS, which has been the centerpiece of nearly every debate for both parties—especially since the horrific attacks in Paris last November. These are serious issues we need to talk about, but another threat is missing from the list.

The danger I’m referring to has been identified as a “threat multiplier” by top military leaders for years. It calls our men and women in uniform into unsafe places overseas, from resource-starved, unstable communities to typhoon-ravaged coastal cities. It makes training exercises and remote support at home more difficult due to blackouts and droughts. And all the while, it’s going unaddressed—in fact, it wasn’t even mentioned in the last two presidential debates!

I’m talking, of course, about climate change—and our national addiction to oil that fuels it.

If you don’t believe that oil endangers our troops, just ask the Marines I worked with at Twentynine Palms in California who headed off to Afghanistan and Iraq and ended up guarding slow and very flammable fuel conveys through the desert, or sailors who have patrolled the dangerous waters around Iran just to keep the global oil trade going.

And if climate change seems too abstract to be a real risk to anyone, try telling that to the airmen who deliver supplies to people around the world after severe weather disasters, or soldiers who are deployed to help unstable governments plagued by resource shortages and mass migration.

Like every national security threat that has ever faced our country, however, we can hit back.

Investing in clean energy sources like solar and wind power here at home will reduce the amount of climate-change-causing fossil fuels we are pumping into the atmosphere, but it has other benefits too! When we invest in these energy sources, we’re creating jobs at home and developing the technology that we’ll sell to other nations throughout the 21st century.

Working together, we can reach a goal that will make a real impact: 50 percent of our electricity nationwide provided by clean energy by the year 2030.

Many folks argue that we have bigger fish to fry than climate change—namely, all that stuff I listed a few paragraphs ago, including ISIS and everything else destabilizing our crazy world.

But the great thing about our country is that when it comes to national security, we don’t pick and choose our threats. Instead, we roll up our sleeves and solve the problem, whether it is a short-term threat or a long-term, existential one.

Investing in clean energy is an essential first step for the United States to stay safe by combating climate change. It isn’t going to be easy— there is much to do, and we’re short on time.

But this is exactly the type of challenge that American innovation and dedication is meant to answer.